Ahead Of Sowing Season After Lost Year, Manipur Paddy Farmers Wait For Help

Yumnam Ranjan was a farmer in a village in Manipur eight months ago. Now he's a carpenter in a crowded city.

The 42-year-old resident of Phubala village in Bishnupur district has rented a small room in the state capital Imphal. He says he did some basic woodwork in his village, which helped him bag a job at a furniture-making unit in Imphal, but it took the farmer many months to perfect his skills for the furniture market.

He stopped farming on July 8, 2023, the day a bullet pierced his upper hip. Another grazed his right arm.

"I was working in my field with others from the village. We were talking. The hill to the farm is about half a kilometre. They came down and shot a few rounds before running away. I was hit from behind," Mr Ranjan said. He sat with his back to a concrete wall in Imphal's 'Hicham Yaicham Pat', a monument that honours the people of Manipur who died fighting the British in 1891.

"Some people around me ran, some lay on the field. The pain was unbearable, like the stab of a hundred needles. One of the farmers dragged me back till the dirt road that led to our village," Mr Ranjan said.

He said the government paid for his treatment at a hospital, where he stayed for three weeks, and many from the common public donated too.

Phubala is 2 km from Naranseina, a village where the farmers in February told NDTV they have been stopped from going towards the foothills due to the risk of being shot at. At present, all they do is look at the ruined, unharvested crops in the distance and complain about it.

"We have not been able to return to the fields near the foothills. They call it a buffer zone... I have submitted all documents to the government for aid, but haven't got any response," Mr Ranjan said. He filed a first information report (FIR) with the police in the lakeside town Moirang, in which he mentioned the suspects as "Kuki militants". NDTV has seen a copy of the FIR.

The "buffer zones" are actually sensitive areas between the Kuki-Zo-dominated hills and the Meitei-dominated valley, guarded by central security forces, since ethnic violence broke out between the two communities in May 2023 over cataclysmic disagreements on sharing land, resources, political representation, and affirmative action policies.

Till March 2023, Manipur had 2.28 lakh hectares of paddy cultivation, of which the hills had 1.07 lakh hectares and the valley had 1.20 lakh hectares, according to Chief Minister N Biren Singh. Farmers couldn't use 5,127 hectares - or 4 per cent of the total paddy cultivation area - due to the violence. The Centre gave a relief package of Rs 38.60 crore, the Agriculture Ministry told parliament on December 8, 2023. It is the farmers who depend on this 4 per cent cultivable area, all of them in the foothills, who face the highest risk of being shot at.

Khunjamayum Gopen Luwang, the chief of Irabot Foundation, a non-profit that has been documenting farmer issues in Manipur, told NDTV the government should release aid for farmers before this year's sowing season starts, usually during the May to July period.

Mr Luwang said they have been going to every village in the foothills to take details of farmers who have lost a year's worth of earnings due to the ethnic violence.

"It is a difficult process. We have to verify the losses to ensure the right farmers get compensation," Mr Luwang said. "When we went to the government to remind them about the aid, the officials told us the process of disbursement has started, but work is pending in bank," he said.

So far, 5,882 farmers have been identified for compensation, Mr Luwang said, out of which 3,483 have been marked as valid claims, and 2,399 remain to be checked. These are mostly paddy farmers.

Those who are in horticulture, fisheries, and poultry, however, haven't got approval for compensation, the Irabot Foundation chief told NDTV. He said the government should consider them in their compensation policy as many of them had farms near the foothills and they, too, had to shut down due to the violence.

The Kuki-Zo tribes have refuted the Meiteis' claims of attacking farmers without provocation. The tribes who are a majority in the hill areas in southern Manipur and a few other districts say Meitei armed groups such as the Arambai Tenggol and even surrendered members of the United National Liberation Front (Pambei), or UNLF(P), have frequently crossed the sensitive areas guarded by the central forces and attacked Kuki-Zo villages.

The government or the security forces have not commented publicly on these allegations, though the Manipur Police had pointed at the Arambai Tenggol as a huge problem after some members of the armed group, who call themselves "village defence volunteers", attacked the house of a senior police officer.

Both communities frequently fight a narrative battle on social media, pointing at alleged visuals of atrocities the other community has committed.

Manipur will vote in the Lok Sabha elections on April 19 and 26. Of the two seats in the state, Inner Manipur will vote on April 19, along with some areas of Outer Manipur constituency. The remaining Outer Manipur areas will vote on April 26. Counting is on June 4.